The volatility of comprehensive income as performance measure: evidence from European banks

Incollingo Alberto, Lucchese Manuela, Di Carlo Ferdinando

The issue of the IAS 1 revised has introduced in the financial statement a new measure of the firm performance: the comprehensive income. This kind of measure should be a more volatile index than the net income and all the ratios built with it should suffer the short term variation of its components, often dependents on the fluctuation of the market. For these reasons, in this study we try to understand if there is a real higher volatility of comprehensive income, compared to the simple net income, using the standard deviation of the two measures during the period examined in the sample. The sample analyzed includes financial statements of Italian, German, French, Spanish and British financial institutions for the years 2008-2015.

Key-Words: Bilancio e principi contabili